“I Know, you Know”: Epistemic Egocentrism in Children and Adults

2003 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward B. Royzman ◽  
Kimberly Wright Cassidy ◽  
Jonathan Baron
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
General Feature ◽  
Developmental Psychology ◽  
Normative Ethics ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Heuristics And Biases ◽  
Human Judgment ◽  
Privileged Information ◽  
Research Traditions

This article reviews the evidence and theory pertaining to a form of perspective-taking failure—a difficulty in setting aside the privileged information that one knows to be unavailable to another party. The authors argue that this bias (epistemic egocentrism, or EE) is a general feature of human cognition and has been tapped by 2 independent and largely uncommunicating research traditions: the theory-of-mind tradition in developmental psychology and, with more sensitive probes, the “heuristics and biases” tradition in the psychology of human judgment. This article sets the stage for facilitating communication between these traditions as well as for the recognition of EE's breadth and potential interdisciplinary significance: The authors propose a life-span account and a tentative taxonomy of EE; and they highlight the interdisciplinary significance of EE by discussing its implications for normative ethics.

Group membership and the effects on visual perspective taking

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana Schneider ◽  
Anne Grigutsch ◽  
Matthias Schurz ◽  
Romi Zäske ◽  
Stefan R. Schweinberger
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Mental State ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Visual Perspective ◽  
Interference Effects ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Visual Perspective Taking ◽  
Mental State Ascription ◽  
Ethnic Nationality ◽  
Level 1

It has been hypothesized that visual perspective-taking, a basic Theory of Mind mechanism, might operate quite automatically particularly in terms of ´what´ someone else sees. As such we were interested in whether different social categories of an agent (e.g., gender, race, nationality) influence this mental state ascription mechanism. We tested this assumption by investigating the Samson level-1 visual perspective-taking paradigm using agents with different ethnic nationality appearances. A group of self-identified Turkish and German participants were asked to make visual perspective judgments from their own perspective (self-judgment) as well as from the perspective of a prototypical Turkish or German agent (other-judgment). The respective related interference effects - altercentric and egocentric interferences - were measured. When making other-judgments, German participants showed increased egocentric interferences for Turkish compared to German agents. Turkish participants showed no ethnic group influence for egocentric interferences and reported feeling associated with the German and Turkish nationality to a similar extent. For self-judgments, altercentric interferences were of similar magnitude for both ethnic agents in both participant groups. Overall this indicates that in level-1 visual perspective-taking, other-judgments and related egocentric interferences are sensitive to social categories and are better described as a flexible, controlled and deliberate mental state ascription mechanism. In contrast, self-judgments and related altercentric interference effects are better described as automatic, efficient and unconscious mental state ascription mechanisms. In a broader sense the current results suggest that we should stop considering automaticity an all-or-none principle when it comes theory of mind processes.

Chimps, Dogs, and Us

Reading Minds ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 98-112
Author(s):  
Henry M. Wellman
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Social Understanding ◽  
Mind Reading ◽  
Theories Of Mind ◽  
Almost All

This chapter addresses how animal studies are a crucial way to discover what makes people, and our theories of mind, uniquely human. Chimpanzee social understanding falls far short of human children’s. Nevertheless, people’s human theory of mind reflects beginnings owed to nonhuman ancestors. At the same time, human theory of mind is distinctive. It is broad, impacting almost all of human cognition and social interaction. It is fundamentally developmental, requiring more and more advanced mind-reading insights over an entire human life. It is also helpful and communicative. Even infants deploy their social–cognitive insights to help, communicate with, and learn about others. As such, while people sprang from animal ancestors, it is their advanced, rapidly developing social understanding that makes them uniquely human.

scholarly journals Systematic Comparison of Brain Imaging Meta-Analyses of ToM with vPT

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aditi Arora ◽  
Matthias Schurz ◽  
Josef Perner
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Visual Perspective ◽  
Common Denominator ◽  
Precentral Gyrus ◽  
Developmental Studies ◽  
Temporoparietal Junction ◽  
Visual Perspective Taking ◽  
Extrastriate Body Area ◽  
Meta Analyses

In visual perspective taking (vPT) one has to concern oneself with what other people see and how they see it. Since seeing is a mental state, developmental studies have discussed vPT within the domain of “theory of mind (ToM)” but imaging studies have not treated it as such. Based on earlier results from several meta-analyses, we tested for the overlap of visual perspective taking studies with 6 different kinds of ToM studies: false belief, trait judgments, strategic games, social animations, mind in the eyes, and rational actions. Joint activation was observed between the vPT task and some kinds of ToM tasks in regions involving the left temporoparietal junction (TPJ), anterior precuneus, left middle occipital gyrus/extrastriate body area (EBA), and the left inferior frontal and precentral gyrus. Importantly, no overlap activation was found for the vPT tasks with the joint core of all six kinds of ToM tasks. This raises the important question of what the common denominator of all tasks that fall under the label of “theory of mind” is supposed to be if visual perspective taking is not one of them.

Listener-adapted speech

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 376-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabelle Lorge ◽  
Napoleon Katsos
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Cognitive Measures ◽  
Pitch Range ◽  
Communicative Skills ◽  
Adult Participants

Abstract While a significant amount of research has focussed on whether bilingualism bestows advantages in cognitive skills, perspective-taking and Theory of Mind, less is known about the effect of bilingualism in communicative tasks where these and related skills may be called for. This study examines bilingual and monolingual adults’ communicative skills through their production of two types of listener-adapted speech (LAS): child-directed speech and foreigner-directed speech. 20 monolinguals and 20 bilingual adults were asked to explain a cooking recipe to a child, a non-native adult and a control native adult. Participants adapted their speech for the child and the foreigner compared to the native adult. Furthermore, bilinguals adapted some features of their speech to a greater extent and in a fine-tuned way (wider pitch range addressing the child and vowel hyperarticulation addressing the foreigner). The prevalence of these features in bilingual speech was not correlated with personality or cognitive measures. We discuss possible sources of this difference in speech adaptation and implications for theories of bilingual cognition.

Development of Judgment, Decision Making, and Rationality

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maggie Toplak ◽  
Jala Rizeq
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Cognitive Development ◽  
Systematic Errors ◽  
Judgment And Decision Making ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Dual Process ◽  
Heuristics And Biases ◽  
Research Traditions ◽  
Dual Process Models ◽  
Gradual Onset

There is a long tradition of studying children’s reasoning and thinking in cognitive development and education. The initial studies in the cognitive development of reasoning were motivated by Piagetian models, and developmental age was thought to bring the gradual onset of logical thinking. The introduction of heuristics and biases tasks in adults and dual process models have provided new perspectives for understanding the development of reasoning, judgment, and decision-making skills. These heuristics and biases tasks provided a way to operationalize the systematic errors that people make in their judgments. Dual process models have advanced our understanding of the basic processes implicated in both optimal and non-optimal responders on several types of paradigms, including heuristics and biases tasks and classic reasoning paradigms. Importantly, these skills and competencies are generally separable from the types of higher cognition assessed on measures of intelligence and executive function task performance. Given the history of the study of reasoning in cognitive development, there is a need to integrate our understanding across these somewhat separate literatures. This is especially true given the opposite predictions that seem to be suggested in these different research traditions. Specifically, there is a focus on increasing logical development in the classic cognitive developmental literature and alternatively, there has been a focus on systematic errors in judgment and decision-making in the study of reasoning in adults. This article provides an integration of the two aforementioned perspectives that are rooted in different empirical and historical traditions. These considerations are addressed by drawing upon their research traditions and by summarizing more recent developmental work that has investigated these paradigms.

Theory of mind and wisdom: The development of different forms of perspective-taking in late adulthood

2017 ◽  
Vol 109 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannes Rakoczy ◽  
Raphaela Wandt ◽  
Stefanie Thomas ◽  
Jana Nowak ◽  
Ute Kunzmann
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Late Adulthood
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